Friday, April 17, 2015

More Political news and opinion

Update

I have an aneurysm?

I received a letter today (Friday) from my Primary Care Doc
at the VA. She said my CT scan of my lungs in July revealed I have
a 4.5 CM
aneurysm, and she is going to schedule another CT scan his summer to
re-evaluate this. Unfortunately, I got the mail to late too call
her. I am surprised to learn of this nine months later, as I have
always understood that aneurysms are life threatening, and 4.5 CM (1.77 inches)
seems pretty large. Guess I'll find out Monday what the deal is. ~Bob

26'ers from all times, Regiment, MAU and MEU. All
battalions, Iwo
to current, and supporting units. See www.26thMarines.com for details or contact. Sonny
Hollub 512-312-4168 or sonnyusmc@gmail.com. (My
regiment in Vietnam,
so I was happy to include this at his request. ~Bob)

General News and Comment

Morning Plum: Hillary
evolves on issues important to the left. By Greg Sargent

Excerpt: It is probably too late for any Democrat to mount a
credible primary challenge to Hillary Clinton, who appears to have sewn up much
of the sort of the hidden elite support and backing from party actors that
tends to influence voters’ choice of a nominee. Yet on some issues, at least, Clinton is acting as if
she has a lot of work to do in terms of securing support from liberal Democrats
who might be tempted to give someone else a second look. This is not lost on
former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, who has now taken a subtle shot at Clinton for shifting on
issues important to rank and file Dems.

Excerpt: See Hillary ride in a van! Watch her meet everyday
Americans! Witness her ordering! Which she did wearing shades, as did her chief
aide Huma Abedin, yielding security-camera pictures that made them look (to borrow from Karl Rove) like fugitives on the
lam, wanted in seven states for a failed foreign policy. There’s something
surreal about Hillary Clinton’s Marie Antoinette tour, sampling cake and
commoners.

Excerpt: On Thursday, citizens of the Internet had a good
chuckle over Hillary Clinton's meeting with local Democratic officials in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
The video footage from after the meeting revealed the rather flagrant parking
of her campaign van in a handicapped parking space, despite the availability of
a regular spot immediately in front of it. That particular misstep can probably
be laid at the feet of the Secret Service agent who chauffeurs Clinton. Not so the many times in Clinton's career in public
life where she has similarly displayed the attitude that rules are for little
people, and not herself or her family.

Excerpt: Charles Krauthammer mocked Mrs.
Clinton and her ongoing tour of flyover country. She wants to get the big money
out of politics, he said, but she is aiming to generate an unprecedented
campaign war chest of $2.5 billion. “She has been taking in money ever since
she took the silverware from the White House when they left in 2001,”
Krauthammer said. “I mean, it really is a stretch. I just find this rather
amusing. This is her Marie Antoinette cake tour.” “The problem with her is the
inauthenticity has reached a point where nothing you see is believable,” the
conservative columnist said. “Even if she were sincere about anything you
wouldn’t be able to tell it.”

Excerpt: But now Hillary Clinton is branching out into Joe
Biden country. Back in 1988, Joe Biden was forced to end his presidential bid
when it was discovered that the tales he told of his hardscrabble coal-mining
father were actually borrowed from stump speeches by British socialist Neil
Kinnock and Biden’s father was a middle class professional.

A 'Postcard' From
Twentynine Palms, California
- With Heart (as in Purple) - About a Great Marine. By Andy Weddington

Excerpt: Big Mac Dube was a fine man, Marine, and
American. He was a patriot. He was not only a proud citizen of his community
but a selfless servant thereof. He was the essence of Smith's opening quote.

When veterans return, their children also deal with the
invisible wounds of war. By Emily
Wax-Thibodeaux

Excerpt: Twice a day, Koen Hughes’s medicine alarm beeps and
sputters. He yells out across the kitchen to his father, retired Army
Staff Sgt. Jonah Hughes, an Iraq war veteran, who suffers from such a severe
brain injury that it’s hard for him to remember things like whether he
showered, and sometimes how to shower. Koen is always there, reminding him to
take his anti-seizure pills, nervously double-checking his medicine box and
squinting as he monitors his father’s behavior. Koen is 10.

Excerpt: LaHood is about as establishment a choice as one
could imagine. He is the son of Representative Ray LaHood, the very moderate
Republican who represented about half of the current district in Congress until
2009. He then left office to become President Obama’s Transportation Secretary,
where he promoted pork-barrel spending and dubious high-speed-rail projects. His
son’s supporters say his politics are distinct from those of his father, but
clearly the LaHood name will be a mixed blessing in a primary. On the one hand,
it brings strong name identification for Darin LaHood. But on the other, it
leaves many of the district’s conservatives looking for a fresh, non–status quo
alternative.

Excerpt: China
may be able to take out an American aircraft carrier with its feared DF-21
antiship ballistic missile (ASBM) without even taking a shot. For years the
U.S. Navy has been warning of the potential of the DF-21 to strike a carrier as
part of the justification for updating the systems and networks of shielding
that protect the country’s most visible – and some say most vulnerable –
military icons. The Navy brass did a good job making its case. Maybe too good.
Now some powerful people in DC are looking to reduce the fleet by a carrier or
two in the belief that the DF-21 will make it too dangerous for the ships even
to get close to
Chinese territorial waters.

Excerpt: Earlier this month the IRS placed a $70,000 tax
lien against MSNBC host Melissa Harris Perry, who is perhaps best known for
wearing tampon
earrings and mocking
Mitt Romney’s black grandchild. The lien seems to have come as a surprise
to Harris-Perry, who once tweeted that she would pay her taxes “with
a smile.” (Must be a mistake--the IRS usually goes after conservatives.
~Bob)

Excerpt: Phoenix
has been ruled by liberal Democrats for many years. The ethnically diverse
culture of downtown Phoenix
is an island smack dab in the center of a largely conservative state. So,
back in 2008 Phoenix
decided to go into business and buy themselves a Sheraton Hotel. They invested
more than half a billion dollars in the place. Then they staffed it with their
favorite unions and kept workers happy with juicy pay and benefits packages and
bumped their salaries up each year. Not surprisingly, the Phoenix owned Sheraton is bleeding money...so
much so that the city is nearly bankrupt and can't finance municipal
needs. They've hiked parking rates (which drove downtown shoppers to the
suburbs), they implemented a tax on food, and you need a bankroll to pay for
the various city fees they assess to even talk to a municipal bureaucrat.

Excerpt: Attention parents of college students across America.
Apparently, your children may not be safe. This isn't a warning about real
physical dangers on campus, from assault to random shootings. Rather, some advocacy groups say college
students are at risk – maybe you'd better sit down for this – of being exposed
to ideas and opinions they may not like. It's getting so bad that this week,
the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) New York chapter demanded that Brooklyn College "take measures to
ensure the safety of Muslim and Arab-American students" because of an
upcoming speech by a harsh critic of Islam.

Excerpt: The EPA’s carbon dioxide regulation could end up
destroying nearly four times as many jobs as the agency said it would by 2030.
A report by
the American Action Forum found that job losses from EPA’s carbon rule could be
as high as 296,000. AAF’s report found the EPA’s rule to fight global warming
endangers the viability of more than 90 power plants across the country that
produce 50 gigawatts of power. These plant closures, the EPA says, will put
80,000 people out of work by 2030. But once economy-wide impacts are taken
into account,
some 296,000 jobs could be lost during that time, notes AAF.

Excerpt: Jeff Leeds says installing SolarCity’s panels on
the roof of his home in the Northern California city of El Granada was the sorriest day of his life.
Agreeing to the company’s 20-year lease was like partnering with the
devil, he claims. He says he has endured skyrocketing electric bills,
installation of an inferior system and contract violations because SolarCity
refuses to clean the panels or to provide a payment for his system’s poor
performance. The latest surprise: a notice from his bank telling him that
SolarCity had placed a lien on his home, and that his equity
line of creditapplication could
not proceed until the lien was removed.

Excerpt: So now it turns out that Israel’s security, perhaps its very
existence, will be jeopardized in order to give Barack Obama some
post-presidential bragging points. It was recently revealed that the President
intends to publicly endorse specific borders and other terms for a Palestinian
state, which he hopes will go down in history as the “Obama Framework.” But it
would be more truthful to call it what it is — the Palestinian Framework. (As
long as Obama seeks to make Israel repent for the evils of Western colonialism
by agreeing to suicide borders with the so-called Palestinians, he should
issue an executive order so that the return CA, NV, AZ, NM, CO and WY to
Mexico. After all, these areas were taken in a war of conquest, while Israel's
accretion of territory was due to a war of defense. Now, let's talk about Russia in Ukraine,
China in Tibet, Spain
in Catalonia and Granada,
England and Scotland,
etc. Cordially, --Larry Greenberg.)

Excerpt: The problem, of course, remains that most Jews do
not fully comprehend the links between our contemporary victories and those of
antiquity. Whenever a Jew hears the word “Zionism,” they are often reminded of
a vicious Jew-hating campaign of the collectivists, the Islamist extremists,
and the neo-Nazis to ostracize its champions. This remains especially true on
college campuses, when Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace demonize
the term completely out of historical context to uphold their deplorable, false
narrative. Jewish or pro-Israel students do not repeat the true Zionist story,
mostly out of fear of campus censorship
initiated by opinionated professors and catalyzed by their intolerant peers.

Excerpt: Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas
awarded medals to the first male and female jailed Fatah members and the
group's first "martyred" terrorist, the Middle East Media Research
Institute (MEMRI) reports. The awards came in advance of today's
"Palestinian Prisoners Day." Fatima Bernawi was the first woman in
Fatah jailed for terrorist activity, an article posted Thursday on
Fatah's Egyptian website said.

Excerpt: According to the FBI, three-fifths of all religious
hate crimes in America
are now committed against Jews, while a recent Pew poll revealed that 54
percent of Jewish students have either been the subject of an anti-Semitic
attack or witnessed one. The frequency of these attacks among college-aged
students, moreover, is five times that of any other age group. The reason for
this is obvious: Across the United States student groups associated with the
Muslim Brotherhood, specifically Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and
the Muslim Students Association, are engaged in a vitriolic campaign against Israel and
those students who support its right to exist. These organizations promote the
propaganda of the terrorist organization Hamas, and call for the destruction of
the Jewish state.

Excerpt: According to one Gallup
poll conducted in the United States,
less than half of those polled knew how many Jews were killed in the Holocaust,
while only 44 percent could identify Auschwitz, Dachau, and Treblinka as death camps. In
another poll, 70 percent of those surveyed said they knew what the Holocaust
was—but that means 30 percent didn’t. Holocaust knowledge in all areas was
higher among older people, and lower among younger people. According to a poll
in the United Kingdom,
28 percent of respondents ages 18-29 said they didn’t know if the Holocaust
happened. Then there was the poll commissioned by the University of Haifa
that said 40.5 percent of Israeli Arabs—40.5 percent!—don’t believe the
Holocaust ever occurred. (George Santayana's famous statement, "Those who
cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," (The Life of Reason,
Volume 1, 1905) should not be taken literally. However the
shocking lack of historical knowledge among the educated young portends a
blindness to unpleasant things in the world and their unpreparedness to face
moral challenges. The interviews shown here are in Toronto, but I would bet that 90% of college
educated people born after 1975 would be in this category. Cordially,
Larry Greenberg)

Excerpt: Hezbollah Brigades, a US-designated Foreign
Terrorist Organization, is deploying forces to the western provincial capital
of Ramadi to fight off an Islamic State offensive. The Iranian-backed Shiite
militia continues to promote past attacks against US forces on its official
website. Hezbollah Brigades has begun to release videos of its fighters
operating in the western city, which has been contested for the past year. The
Islamic State stepped up its offensive in Ramadi earlier this week.

Excerpt: This drumbeat of headlines, however, should not
distract us from the larger meaning of events in the Middle
East. We are witnessing a struggle for regional dominance between
two loose and shifting coalitions — one roughly grouped around Saudi Arabia and one around Iran. Despite
the sectarian hue of the coalitions, Sunni-Shiite enmity is not the best
explanation for today’s regional war. This is a naked struggle for power:
Neither of these coalitions has fixed membership or a monolithic ideology, and
neither has any commitment whatsoever to the bedrock issues that would promote
good governance in the region. (an interesting analysis of what is going on in
the Middle East. --Del)

Excerpt: In a newly released video showing
the Islamic State’s assault on the Baiji oil refinery complex, one of the
scenes shows two children using what appears to be a US-made M198 howitzer. The
children fired the howitzer towards Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) positions in
the complex. In the past, the group has highlighted the use of children as
executioners, or as helpers in executions, many times.

Excerpt: Italy's
migration crisis took on a deadly new twist Thursday as police in Sicily reported that Muslim migrants had thrown 12
Christians overboard during a recent crossing from Libya, and an aid group said
another 41 were feared drowned in a separate incident. Palermo
police said they had detained 15 people suspected in the high seas assault,
which they learned of while interviewing tearful survivors from Nigeria and Ghana
who had arrived in Palermo
Wednesday morning after being rescued at sea by the ship Ellensborg. The 15
were accused of multiple homicide aggravated by religious hatred, police
said in a statement.

Iraqi officials: Top
Saddam Hussein aide may have been killed in fighting

Excerpt: Izzat
Ibrahim al-Douri was reportedly killed during fighting against Sunni
insurgent forces, senior Iraqi officials claimed Friday, in a potential blow to
factions opposing the government in Baghdad.
But previous reports over the years about Douri’s death have proven
wrong.

Excerpt: And now, Spartanburg
faces a dangerous invasion with only a handful of patriots inspired by the urge
of freedom to stand against it. The invasion is a silent and secret one. The
soldiers come as refugees funneled
through ratlines run by liberal churches and other pseudo-religious
organizations. Tens of thousands
of Muslim migrants come from conflict zones to small towns and cities
across the country just like Spartanburg
each year. But Spartanburg’s fighting spirit is still alive and Congressman
Trey Gowdy, who represents the Spartanburg area, has challenged
a plan to dump migrants, including possibly Syrians, there, inquiring
whether they have criminal
records and what background checks
have been performed on them.

Netherlands: Families of those who joined Islamic
State to sue government. By Robert Spencer, JihadWatch.org

Excerpt: The government should have done more to stop them,
you see. Should these Muslim families have done more to stop them? Should they
have not taught them the virtue of jihad against Infidels? Should they have
tried to disabuse them of their jihadist notions? Of course not. It’s always
the Infidel’s fault, you greasy Islamophobe. Don’t you know that by now?